Engine Details
| TV3D SDK 6.5 |
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Rating:
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| The TV3D SDK is a complete programming suite that accelerates the development of 3D games and applications. If you need to quickly prototype an idea, or need to quickly bring a product to market, then the TV3D SDK will save you time and money. With our 3D engine you have the power of an expensive 3D SDK, at a price that will not break your budget. |
| Author |
Truevision3D, LLC |
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| Graphics API |
DirectX |
Operating Systems |
Windows |
| Programming Language |
C/C++, C#, Delphi, Visual Basic 6, VB.NET |
Status |
Productive/Stable |
| Documentation |
Yes |
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| Features |
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General Features |
Object-Oriented Design:
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Full unicode support |
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Global stream system for data loading from file, file part, memory stream, or package |
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Included math library with all standard functions for vectors, matrices, and quaternions |
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Internal profiler with on screen output to help determine bottlenecks in your rendering |
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Unified angle system for all internal functions allowing you to use degrees or radians |
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Physics |
Collision Detection, Rigid Body, Vehicle Physics:
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Based upon the Newton Game Dynamics physics engine |
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Direct integration for engine objects, including meshes, actors, terrain |
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Accurate collision detection and friction solver with configurable accuracy |
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Rigid body colliders support include box, sphere, cylinder, cone, and convex hull |
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Static body colliders support includes mesh and terrain |
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Combine multiple colliders into one rigid body |
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Full joint support with limits including ball, hinge, universal, up, and sliders |
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Motorized joints supported |
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Fully configurable vehicle system |
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Buoyancy for bodies based upon a water plane |
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Configurable auto freezing of bodies when they are idle |
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Ragdolls supported by direct actor bone manipulation |
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Lighting |
Per-vertex, Per-pixel, Lightmapping:
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Point, Directional, and Spot lights supported |
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Managed lighting system to automatically select the best active lights for the object |
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Standard per-vertex lighting with transform and lighting support |
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Per-pixel lighting with bumpmapping support |
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Cubemap filter for point light and bumpmapping |
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Per-Pixel and per-vertex precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) for meshes |
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Lightmap support for meshes and terrain |
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Shadows |
Shadow Volume:
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Optimized dynamic stencil shadows |
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Texturing |
Basic, Multi-texturing, Bumpmapping:
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Script system to setup texture effects |
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Offset/Parallax tangent bumpmapping support |
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Material system with ambient, diffuse, emissive, specular, and power support |
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Shaders |
Pixel, High Level:
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Full DirectX 9.0c effect file support for shaders, in HLSL or Assembly |
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Support for Shader Model 1.0 to Shader Model 3.0 |
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Extensive support of predefined semantics for access to internal parameters |
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Shaders supported on most TV3D objects, including Mesh, Actor, Landscape, and Minimesh |
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Scene Management |
BSP, Occlusion Culling, PVS:
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Fast view frustum culling (sphere and box) |
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BSP Rendering Engine with PVS/Lightmapping |
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Animation |
Keyframe Animation, Skeletal Animation, Morphing, Animation Blending:
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High performance skeletal or morph target animations |
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Supports 3 skinning modes, including CPU, Blended, and Shader-Based |
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Animation transition support from one animation to another |
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Full attachment system for actor bones |
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Bone manipulation via internal calls for custom animation systems |
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Meshes |
Mesh Loading, Skinning:
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Exporters for Maya, 3DS Max, and Milkshape3D |
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Included conversion utility for Halflife 1 MDL files |
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Special Effects |
Environment Mapping, Billboarding, Particle System, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, Sky, Water, Fog:
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Billboard-based Particle System |
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Atmospheric effects like fog, cloud, sky (box and sphere), stars |
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Gamma control, and full screen fading and flash effects |
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Glow and Bloom with full emissive map support |
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Per object velocity-based motion blur (PS 2.0+) |
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Depth of Field (PS 2.0+) |
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Terrain |
Rendering, CLOD, Splatting:
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Highly optimized chunk based terrain rendering |
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Chunked LOD with geomorphing for progressive LOD |
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Realtime deformable terrain with single or array based point updates |
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Detailed texturing using texture splatting with up to 16 simultaneous layers |
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8bit or 24bit heightmap support for terrain generation |
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Custom terrain data format for fast terrain loading and parsing |
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Fast altitude queries and collision detection |
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Automated fast culling using internal quadtree |
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Complex integrated water system for realistic looking water |
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Sound & Video |
2D Sound, 3D Sound, Streaming Sound:
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DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectShow support |
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Allows to make unique sound atmosphere for your games |
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Hardware/Software Sound mixing |
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Unlimited simultaneous sounds |
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MP3, WAV, MOD, SM3, IT, MID, RMI, SGT support |
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3D Sound support that can be linked easily to a 3d world |
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Effects (reverb, echo, etc.) to give more depth to your sounds |
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Movie playing (all formats) for cut-scenes |
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Rendering |
Fixed-function, Fonts, GUI:
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Windowed or fullscreen support, with the ability to switch between modes during rendering |
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32bits standard rendering pipeline for main buffer rendering |
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64bits and 128bits floating point rendering pipeline available |
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Multiple viewport mode available in windowed mode |
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Multiple adapter support, with full enumeration of devices and supported rendering modes |
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Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering up to 16x supported |
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Switch between point, line, and solid rendering modes |
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| Date Added |
Mon, 26 Jul 2004 |
Last Updated |
Tue, 2 Oct 2007 |
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There are currently 70 reviews for this engine
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| License Name |
Price |
Source Code |
Comments |
| Other/Custom |
Free |
No |
Watermark displayed at all times during rendering; commercial distribution disallowed |
| Other/Custom |
$150.00 |
No |
Allows distribution of a single software product |
| Other/Custom |
$500.00 |
No |
Allows distribution of an unlimited number of software products |
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Screenshots:
Member Reviews |
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NOTE: The ratings and reviews below reflect the opinions of their respective authors and as such, do not reflect the opinions of DevMaster.net or its staff.
The reviews are not moderated and some are completely inaccurate. Therefore, most reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. If you find any inaccurate or inappropriate reviews, let us know by stating in detail why you think the review should be removed and any links/documents that support your contention.
| Awesome engine |
| Top notch engine. Easy to use. Allows me to focus on coding. Next version (now in beta) will have unreal-3 style effects... pixel shader 3, etc... top notch support... the community is great... and on top of it all, it runs FAST in VB!!!! |
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| Version 6.5 is an excellent 3D engine! |
Support Rating :
Basically, if it were possible I would rate the support a 6 out of 5. Sylvain Dupont and Arli Mujkic, of Truevision, have been extremely helpful in in fixing bugs, adding new features, and explaining some of the interesting features of the engine. These guys are available via IRC pretty much 18 hours a day!
Ease of Use:
The engine itself it fairly easy to use and it supports many languages such as VB6, Delphi, .Net, and C++. Since the 6.5 engine is still in beta there are some missing documents and samples. However, the real-time support more than makes up for this short coming. Normally, I would rate the support a 4 out of 5 because of the missing documentation during the beta. However, the header files are easy to understand, they offer real-time help via IRC, and the the engine even allows you to code directly in DirectX 9 through and an easy to use interface.
Stability and Performance:
Well, since the rendering engine is much faster than my custom code and more flexible than any of the other engines that I have tried, I an forced to rate the performance a 5 out of 5. Once again you even have the ability to code directly in DirectX 9 if you think you can do something faster.
As for Stability, the product is still in beta so it is hard to give perfect marks here. However, I have found that bugs are fixed extremely fast once discovered. For example, there has been at least four releases to fix small bugs in the past week.
Features:
As a 3D rendering engine the product has wonderful quality. However, at this point only the 3D engine (with physics), mesh viewer, and converters have been released. During the coming months, Truevision will release their Network and Media engine. Once the product is out of beta I have no doubt that it will exceed the functionality and flexibility of all the engines on the list. Well at least the ones that average Indie Coder can actually afford.
Please note that my review is based on my experience with Torque, BlitzBasic, Dark Basic, ORGE, Irrlicht. |
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Beta TV3D SDK 6.5.Posted by:
Arli
at Aug 14, 2004 |
The current TV3D SDK 6 is very complete but 6.5 will be a major upgrade!
The new version of the TV3D SDK has undergone heavy internal rewrite. We are working very hard to bring you the best and most wanted from the graphics industry into the well known easy-to-use TV3D interface!
With new features such as:
* Offset, Tangent-Space, and Object-Space Bumpmapping supported.
* TVPhysics: RigidBodies, RagDolls, Automated Collisions and Optimized for fast preformance.
* Custom formats, TVM (Mesh), TVA (Actor), TVO (Indoor Octree Map), TVS (Complete Scene)
* Exporter plugins for gameSpace, Maya and 3ds max.
* Tools to compile convert and edit all custom formats.
* Shaders support, HLSL FX files etc.
* Morphing capabilities.
* .NET support trough .NET assembly dll.
* ATL/COM dll for use in Visual Basic, Delphi etc.
* Direct Library support for C++ users.
And more! Visit our homepage for the complete list!
And not only do we bring alot of new features on the 3D Engine front we also bring you, in this new SDK, a very complete Media and Network engine! Your pre-6.5 projects will convert into 6.5 in no time! We keep the same and easy-to-use TV3D Interface.
All customers get immidiate access to the beta. Normal users can apply for beta access, we add new users to the program weekly!
I hope that you will be one of our new users!
Best of Wishes,
Arli Mujkic
Senior Developer
Truevision3D, LLC. |
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Bar-None, top of the line.Posted by:
Javin
at Aug 23, 2004 |
Now, at the risk of sounding like a "fanboy," I'm typically fairly critical with my reviews. However, I firmly believe that TV3D deserves the 5 stars in each category. And I'll explain:
Features: With TV 5.8 (possibly earlier), TV moved on to using DirectX 8.1. At 6.2, it supports every feature of 8.1 that I have yet to need, as well as internally providing even more features. (Sound engines, Networking Engines, Particle Engines, Pathfinding, Terrain, Collision, (even physics, soon)you name it.) Having used a few other 3D Engines, I can say that its featureset is unparalleled. With 6.5 (currently in Beta) this will more than triple. Not only will it support all the "toys" of DirectX 9.0c (currently) but it will also give VB6 programmers access to these features. VB6'ers won't have native access to DirectX 9, except with Wrappers/Libraries/Engines such as this.
Ease of Use: I don't know that this can be said much more simply. Instead of the 60 some-odd lines of code necessary to create a simple box with DirectX, TV3D takes maybe 6 to get the same effect. (And this includes initializing the engine, creating the objects, displaying them, and then cleaning up.) So long as you have SOME knowledge of your language of choice, the intuitive design of TV makes it incredibly easy to use. For instance, if you've drawn a Box object and called it objBox, and you want to move it straight forward in the direction it's facing, your line of code would be:
objBox.MoveRelative 1, 0, 0
Creating a light for a scene? Light.CreateDirectionalLight (flags)
My point being, it's VERY straightforward. Now, if you don't know how to program in ANY language, then why are you trying to do 3D in the first place? (Motor obviously has little to no experience with programming in general, and really should not be permitted to review in the first place.)
Stability & Performance: Again, none can compete. Having done some benchmarks myself, I've found that 6.2, running in Visual Basic 6.0, can run at upwards of 80% of the speed of a similar app written in C++ with native DirectX. Yes, it's slower, but we're talking VB6 here. THAT is amazing. With 6.5, the speed is increased even more. Anyone that claims TV is slow has simply never used it. Blitz3D, DarkBasic, etc. can't hold a candle to its speed. As for stability, 6.2 is incredibly stable. If you're crashing, there's a 99.99% chance that the glitch is in your own code. (Much to my chagrin, often times. ;)
Support: This is where TV shines more than any other engine I've used. A perfect example is how I was attempting to do something fairly complex with shaders over the weekend, and simply couldn't figure it out. Logging into the TV official chat room, where there is almost ALWAYS someone from the Development Team available, I spoke to the lead programmer of TV who quickly gave me my answer.
Now let's compare this to the two most recent engines I've tried.
Blitz3D: Tried this one for a very short time. The render speed couldn't come close to competing with TV (When TV is used in VB6) so I quickly dropped it.
DarkBasic Pro: I found this to be VERY unstable, and at the time I used it, the limitations were horrific. Things such as simple binary file access didn't exist (yes, I realize they've since added that.) But when basic features weren't there, that's a bad thing. Plus it was slow. When I asked questions on the forums, I never did get an answer, and after waiting for half a year for an update, I finally dropped it and looked for other options, which is when I found TV. Not to mention the slow speed, as it was an interpreted scripting language.
So my votes are not based on my being a TV "fanboy." They're based on my current experience. And I'm always looking at other engines/libraries to see what the latest and greatest is. I've tried Rev3D (not as intutive/stable/feature filled) and GLScene (not as intuitive/fast/feature filled). This isn't to take anything away from the other products, just simply to say that by comparison, I'll stick with TV.
Then there's the pricing schedule. Considering that most games today cost about $50 each, for a "clean" license (no watermark/splash screen required) at $150 per app, it's far more affordable than most. I personally went with the $500 unlimited licensing, and have used it for everything from user applications, to gaming.
All said and done, I've yet to find anything that can compete with TV's Speed, Features, Stability, or Support. If you're a VB6 programmer trying to do 3D, this is an engine you can't afford NOT to have in your library. Again, the DirectX 9 capabilities are a major plus.
-Javin |
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| The best solution for VB/VB.Net |
I've been using the free version of this engine for 2 years now and trying out other engines as I worked with it, but never have I found the ease of use and usability of TV3D in another engine.
The landscape, particles and mesh systems are fast and the whole structure of the engine is intuitive enough to make your first mini-game within weeks.
Compared to the first 3D engine I've used (DarkBASIC), TV3D gives alot more liberty to the programmer (and even access to DX objects) so you don't really have limitations if you're creative enough.
The newest features like shadow projection and the upcoming 6.5 version supporting multiple texture stages and shaders make this engine a very good renderer too.
The community is also huge, friendly and responsive, and the TV3D staff actually respond to the users' (even non-paying) questions and comments; you wouldn't see that in every commercial engine. TV3D users also give out code snippets and samples regularly, not to mention the TV3DFilez website that contains loads of useful and free information, made by users.
So if you're looking for an unexpensive, well-made and practical engine to make your game running, wether you have no 3D programming experience or if you do, take a look it's worth it! |
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Great enginePosted by:
houde
at Aug 8, 2004 |
This engine is for people with low-budget who want to learn how to make some 3D games/app easily. Once you have learn the basics of 3D programming and you know well your language, you can almost do wathever you want.
In 6.5 which is coming soon, more incredible features will appear and the engine will reach a new level.
I'm new to 3D programming, I never tried any other 3dengine because this one is doing everything I need to, very fast and it supports alot of languages (C/C++, Delphi, VB.NET, VB6).
I recommend it for everyone. It's free if you don't want to do something commercial and if you make a game and you want to sell it, you can just buy a license and it's not that much expensive.
The TV3D community is also very nice, everybody are helping each other. I think there's a lack of documentation, but if you take the time to search on the TV3D Forum or on google, you usually always find what you need.
Good luck to TV3D team for upcoming versions.
TFHTL Project with TV3D: http://tfhtl.thebobs.org/web/ |
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| TV3D 6.2 |
I am currently playing with TV3D 6.2, Torque, Darkbasic Pro and Blitz3D. I have done a few sample programs with each and am currently favoring TV3D.
TV3D shows the most promise and allows use of any language. I typically use VB.NET and C# for other types of programs so it rocks in that aspect. I am eager to see what is in 6.5 which is in beta. TV3D is the best price/performance option if you are looking for something close to DXSDK but with a great starter set of classes.
Blitz3D is quite a bit easier with less flexibility (one non industry standard language) but has blazing fast 3D. I have seen more highly rated games out on download.com that were created with Blitz3d than almost any other engine mostly due to its ease of use.
DBPro is fun for making pong like games :)
Torque is good for large landscapes.
-- edit --
TV3D 6.5 beta is incredible. I'm astounded. It does vs_3_0 & ps_3_0 now!! I don't think any other engines have that capability.
It is blazing fast as well. 1600x1200 scenes with reflection and refraction run nicely on a AMD 2200 with an early ps_2_0 video card hehe.
Playing with this engine is more fun than gaming. |
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| TV3D in commercial use |
We use the engine in VB6 for medical 3D visualization.
We had tried Blitz & Torque and others - TV3D was head and shoulders above the others for its outstanding Landscape Object and Licencing Terms.
We chose it because its essentially a fast C++ based rendering engine that rund from VB6, .net & Delphi.
We needed to call it from VB6 because it had to be written as an integral part of an existing database application.
Beginners may find the wealth of options a bit daunting and so I would say it is not very suitable for novice programmers, but it is well worth sticking with.
To summerize:
We find it fast, well supported, stable, very flexible, reasonably priced and suitable for intermediate / advanced programmers. |
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| I love this engine. |
Sure you could use a more wide known engine like Unreal, Torque, Blitz, Dark Basic, ect. But youll always be happy with your finished product in TrueVision 3d. Being a 3D engine working for a bunch of languages it is highly flexable and no limits. Its simple to code in and you can pick it up in no time after going through the examples. I have never had troubles with the engine stability. Its power always amazes me.
The engine has fantastic documentation and lots of samples and examples included in the SDK. The 6.5 version will have more. Heres a post from a SDK staff member.
#1 - 6.5 will have full documentation, including multiple chapters in a manual to get users started in each language. The art pipeline will be fully documented, and some of the more advanced features touched upon. All of the tools will have descriptions, and how-to manuals.
#2 - 6.5 will come complete with a full set of tutorials, for every standard language we support. (C++, C#, VB.Net, VB, Delphi)
#3 - 6.5 will come complete with a generic framework for each language, so you can quickly get up and running, without having to figure out which objects do what. (Even though that is fully explained in the API reference.)
#4 - The wiki will provide more advanced tutorials for 6.5, including how to achieve some of the more complex effects. It will be an ever growing resource, and when you figure something new and cool out, it helps to explain there how you did it, so others can learn as well. |
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| Fantastic engine |
I`ve used this engine for more than 2 years now in various projects and now in a commerical game. I`m also lucky enough to be on the 6.5 beta team so I know what excellent new features are coming up..
Incredibly stable engine which is forgiving on the new user, along with a very active community (which includes real-time support in the chat rooms) |
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| Power and Flexibility |
(quoted)
I tried it for some time but quickly walked away. Its hard for beginners because no scripting interface is provided. You have to program everything in a language like Delphi or VC++. Also, theres no network (even simple engines like Blitz and DB have network) and it renders very slow. Another turn down is the overpriced license model.
(end quote)
TV3D is not meant for newbie programmers. You must be able to program in any of the multiple languages available for you. (VB, VB.Net, Delphi, C#, C++, etc) This not only grants you greater power and flexibility, but also is much faster.
The license model is very flexible and cheap, with licenses starting at $150 for a commercial product.
Our documentation issues are being addressed with the 6.5 version coming shortly. We not only will have a complete API reference, but also hundreds of pages of information to get a user started using the SDK. There also will be multiple tutorials in every language we support, including a generic framework to get you started quickly. |
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| AWESOME engine |
This engine is the best i ever used (and the first one =]).
But it's incredible cheap for commecrial projects (for non-commercial projetcs it's free).
It has many features, and the support is really great. If you're a newb to programming, you better learn programming first, but after some practicing you'll see that this engine is pretty easy to use.
Excellent Engine. |
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| Superb Engine |
Quite frankly, the best engine I've worked with. Extremely powerful and fast, and yet provides a great wrapper to all major languages (C/C++, .Net languages, VB, Delphi, etc). Very advanced effects can be done simply and easily. The pricing scheme is amazingly cheap, absurdly cheap even.
As mentioned earlier, this is an *engine*, and as such provides an interface to DX. It does not create games for you, you use it with a programming language of your choice to create stunning graphics easily.
The community is incredible, both on IRC and the forums. The users of TV are dedicated and faithful to TV. Many have been working with it for years, using it from games to utilities. The developers are incredibly friendly and helpful, and post frequent updates. They actively get comments from the community on what to improve.
Once again, a professional quality engine available to those who have tight budgets. Highly recommended to anyone. |
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| Simply the best. |
TV3D is easily the best engine out for Indie Developers, It´s easier than torque, and full of features. What torque lacks of (Torque is good, but there´s some annoying issues with it), TV3D have for sale(or for free).
Also, I´m mainly a VB coder, I loved it! |
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| Oh my... Really Grate !!! |
One of the best engine I have ever seen !!, Support wide range of programming languages. More powerful than 3DSTATE (my first 3D Engine) have wide features. In next release (6.5) they introduce wide range of functions and features. Really good for beginners. Download it now !!!
In my Delphi Systems (V5,6,7) it works perfectly than any other engine. FPS in VB & Delphi are grate. (Try demos in TV3D !!!) |
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| Good Engine |
Very good engine!!
Programming a 3D game in Visual Basic is very fast and good. Everything explains itsself if you have been reading the tutorials.
If you are searching for an Engine for your game/app. then take this one!! The best I've seen yet!! |
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The Best Engine!Posted by:
potato
at Mar 5, 2005 |
TV3D is simply the best engine I've ever come across - and I've used many! I'll break it down in each of my rating categories, note that I speak about the 6.5 version, which is in beta, though almost all my statements still apply for the currently publicly available version!
Having shopped for many engines in my experience, TV3D's support is unparalleled. The VB6, VB.NET, C#, C++, and Delphi support has not been seen in other engines! Never have we seen an engine that can be coded in SO many languages, and have such excellent support from the engine's developers, who are always on IRC and ready to help out. The devs of TV are some of the nicest folk you'll meet, and will be lifesavers in your project!
The next biggest draw, for me, is the total ease of use. Where some engines (*coughOGRE*) are so entirely obsessed with inheritability and open-source expandability they drop all pretense of ease-of-use, TV doesn't suffer from this. Initializing the engine is as simple as calling the Init3DFullscreen or Init3DWindowed methods! There's a tremendous engine in the background that doesn't demand your attention constantly, allowing you to write the software YOU want, instead of spending all your time tending to the engine.
The 6.5 beta version also offers a HUGE boost in performance. On my VERY modest (1.4GHz, video card slower than Radeon 8500) machine, I've routinely made my fully-running game operate at over 300fps. Your mileage may vary, but TV is certainly one of the fastest engines out there!
This goes straight into features. TV supports everything from PRT (realtime radiosity) to normal mapping. Everything the top "AAA" engines can do graphically (Source, UE3, Doom 3, CryEngine, etc) TV can also do. The limit is you, not the engine! With VS3 and PS3 support, everything you can code is supported!
Lastly, the pricing of this engine is absolutely superb. At $150 for a commercial license, this is a steal. A fully-featured engine, blazing fast, and utterly simple to use, where you can publish, charge as much money as you want, and still pay only a flat fee of $150? No royalty fees, no percentage of revenue, no extra hidden costs. $150 will get you the engine, regardless of whether you end up making $1000 or $1,000,000 from your game! Try that with the big top engines out there, that demand a hefty six-digit licensing fee, AND THEN also part of your profits!
The only thing that TV is perhaps missing - and that's a VERY big perhaps - is that it's a generic 3D engine. For me, and most other developers, this is a strength, not a weakness. The "top" engines like UE3 and Doom 3 come with a LOT of existing game code, so perhaps if your goal is to build a derivative traditional FPS game, that would be easier (but C++ only, and 6-digit price tag?). The likes of Torque offer you existing game source code that you can pilfer to your heart's delight. TV prefers to give you the raw power of its 3D engine, and leave the exact details about what you want up to you. For me this is a plus, but if you're inexperienced and want to prototype quickly, and have little programming experience, TV is not for you!
That said, TV requires that you are a fairly proficient programmer in your language of choice. If you can't tell the difference between a function and a class, or have only taken rudimentary introductory courses, don't try to make anything big with TV! TV's user-friendliness allows you to create small apps very easily, but a full-fledged game is still a lot of work! |
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| Best Engine for .Net Developers! |
I've been using TV3D for many years now. I started using it with VB6 and was around when it began supporting Managed .Net languages (C# and VB.Net)
As a consultant for a local company, we used TV3D 6.2 to develop a commercial Truck Driving Simulator in C#.
http://www.jjkeller.com/informationcenters/safesim/home.htm
We had near zero issues with TV3D over the year+ we spent developing SafeSim. And the support was always an instant message away! (Thanks Sylv.)
Now, myself and some freinds are using the TV3D 6.5 Beta along with the C# 2.0 beta to build our next app, a game that we are currently calling Krash.
TV3D is great! If you are a .Net developer, then TV3D is the ONLY choice!! |
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| Poor documentation |
The software looks good, but the documentation consists largly of just a list of API objects/methods/events, and there are a few sample projects. It sorely needs a "How to" book written for it.
The support was responsive, but I cannot say the same for the user community. When I joined a discussion on their website about the need for more documentation, I was insulted again and again, then the thread was deleted.
Personally, I prefer software with better docs. However, if you are already proficient with 3D programming, this may be the API for you. :)
If you can decifer this, then you will be fine because this is what you get for documentation: http://www.truevision3d.com/tvdna/
Update 4-21:
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Buyer Beware: This product requires previous 3D programming experience. It's not "easy" or "simple" as they advertise. And there is no how-to book for beginners.
The company said their users didn't need more basic documentation. I said: "If you had better docs, then you would have more customers, experienced and beginners," but that was met with blank stares. :|
Update 4-22
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My point is, you will not find many bad words spoken about the software. :)
When I said positive things, I was praised, but when I asked where the documentation was, I was attacked.
Update 8-4
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I have been watching their website, and several other people have asked the same question on their forum: "Where are the docs?" and been told the same answer: "Just learn it".
Still no docs to speak of for new users. |
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| Interested in this engine? READ THIS! |
For those of you looking for a complete engine this is the one!!! Here are it's benefits... read 'em!
1: SUPPORT
THE SUPPORT FOR THIS ENGINE IS UNPARALLELED ANYWHERE!!! PLAIN AND SIMPLE!!! This is hands down one of the best features of the engine! Those of you that have used an engine know how confusing it can be. The developement team is available via IRC, email, and forum! If you have a question about the egnine you can talk to the developers directly via IRC! No waiting for forum answers or email answers! If you can't get on to IRC ( due to work or no free time ) the forums are EXTREMELY active and post's are answered by other members as well as the developers in a timely fashion. Most of the questions you need answers to are answered in previous posts. If you don't think support is a feature of an engine you should think again! This engine needs the rating of 6 - "Absolutely astounding" in the support catagory!
2a: COST
Look at all the other engines in this list/database. Find the one that even comes close to this engine and you're looking at a 6 digit license fee minimum! Then tack on support fees and who knows what you could end up paying. TrueVision 3d is $150 USD total said and done for a single product license. Very affordable... don't want to produce a product, but want to create a game that you and your friends can play? It's FREE then!
2b: CAPABILITIES
When you have the engine that compares to this one from 2a, I bet it still lacks features of this engine!
Imbedded shader support that automatically switches depending on the graphics card in use.
The landscape engine uses a LOD algorithm that's absolutely astounding! VERY FAST AND SIMPLE TO USE!
There are really too many capabilities of this engine to list here... stop by the website to see some of it's effects in use!
Take it from someone who has used the other engines, those with the 6 digit license fee... TrueVision 3D is one the best engines on the market today!
Laters,
Venn |
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| Great Tool |
The Developers are great, they help out all the time.
and the tool is simple and easy to use.
The tool supports texture splatting..
and IT IS GREAT.. Makes terrain look real.
not to many afordable tools can do that! |
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| Excellent engine |
| Unparalelled support, excellent documentation. Great community. Definately worth the buck fifty in my book. I would recommend this engine to anyone looking to do 3d development without all the hassle and with all the features you could want. |
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| I am freaking impressed! |
| I stumbled across this engine when I was looking for another which my friend suggested. I said, "what the heck!" and started to try it out. I was amazed by how intuitive this engine was. I am by no means a smart man, but being able to use this engine immediately made me feel like I was. Kudos to all of you for this wonderful engine! |
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| My Review |
Flexible, easy to use, developers are a bunch of nice people. It has all the features, and is powerful.
The best 3d engine i ever used.
The 6.5 version is awesome and brings the level of this engine to a whole new height. It can actually compete with the big boys like Doom3 and HL2 now. And all that with support for languages such as VB6 and Delphi, amazing! |
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| Beware: this is t3h future! |
Intro
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I'm a long term user of Truevision3D, I am what we call a "veteran". I also played around with other engines during the past couple of years as I thought I could find better engines elsewhere. I tried MANY engines, from the easy ones to the big engines like LithTech, and you'll find in this post what I have to say about Truevision3D.
Support
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What strikes me the most is the Truevision3D team support. If you have a serious problem, you just post on the forums and you get an answer within couple of hours, or, if you can't wait, you can hop onto the chat where people meet and exchange information with other users.
Features / Easy of use
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I'm a registered user of the current engine and I'm also a beta tester of the next release of Truevision3D version 6.5. the next version, boy oh boy, this is going t3h engine on the scene! Shaders, A* path, physics, multi-textured landscapes, you name it. It is already VERY powerful as we speak. Newbies should be aware of this: if you don't know how to swim, don't jump in the running water of the river or you'll drown. That is: learn how to code before attempting to make your first project with this engine. Truevision3D supports many coding languages, so chose a language to learn and know it well.
Documentation
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As we speak, compared to other engines, Truevision3D lacks documentation. As we speak, compared to other engines, Truevision3D has way more tutorials than needed. The difference between the two is simple: documentation takes a user by the hand and tells him what to put where. Tutorials (working samples with code source) forces the user to learn how the engine works. Its harder to learn with tutorials, but in the long run, trust me, you'll be happy that you learned the hard way.
Performance
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Stability has never been an issue with Truevision3D, even if we go back 5 years ago. The main developer of the engine is always taking care of testing the new features included in the engine before releasing an update. As for the performance, its darn fast. The landscape is one of the most impressive object of the engine and more is to come with the next generation of the engine (version 6.5).
Conclusion
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If you're a hobbyist and want to initiate yourself with the 3D world, I would say that you will do good without buying a license, as long as you can handle the watermark. If you're a serious developer and want to complete a project within prescribed delays, I would say that this is the engine that will help you out making your dream come true as the internal structure of the engine makes your 3 lines of code worth 150 (try coding a car with physics with any other engine and you'll understand what I mean). If you're a project manager and looking for an engine for the next release of your multimillion product, then I would say that you HAVE to try the next generation of this engine (you're granted access to the Beta testing when you buy a license). This is engine is powerful. This engine is going to be even more powerful with the next version but will you able to handle such power? Get in your swimsuit, I think its time for you to jump in and see for yourself. |
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| TV3D is the best step to professionality |
This engine supports so many features, that you cant count them. You get nearly 20 tutorials for each major programming language (NET too!!) (vb, vb.net, delphi, c++, c#) all well documented (it even tells you how a game works indeed (set of images etc). Its features will grow when 6.5 comes out (beta is available for customers already who bought a license for 150$)
You should be advanced in your programming language, then there wont be something in the path to your next great game. In the documentation you will find all commands and sometimes a sample of code.
It runs fine on my machine... didnt expect 700fps of my one, and it never crashed (even if there are some commands where you find an advice not to use them too often to ensure stability)
The community helps where it can (but doesnt write the game for you ;) ) and a Wiki has been put onto web for further information. Two IRC channels are always living with an amount of people online (who not only code, but invite others to their UT servers)
Take a look and try around with it and you will see its value. 150$ are only a few bucks for such a powerful engine. And upgrading to multiple for another 350$ is possible too. |
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| Possibly the Best? |
- The fact that this is one of the few 3D engines out there that supports .NET and C# already makes towards the top of my list. The fact that it's actually STABLE puts at the very top.
- Not only is it stable, but it's quite fast and fully featured up to date (this is based on 6.5 specs).
- Although not quite for beginners but it is very easy to use if you're an intermediate to experience programmer. You can actually figure this out as compared to the Torque engine. But don't try this engine if you're still a beginner to programming and 3D concepts.
- Must keep in mind that this is 3D graphics engine, not a full game development tool. Your are not limited to what type of app your're bulding, but you are not handed many special tools to help build your game. This allows for more flexibily but takes more development time as compared to those rapid development game engine(Blitz3d, 3DGS, DB..etc..). Don't expect for someone to hold your hand and teach you how to develop a game - if you're going this route.
- Documentation is nothing more than a reference help file - with little example code, most are in VB. Could use some more work in that department.
- Has a lot of detailed tutorials - in the form of commented projects - which doesn't really give you much of a choice but forces you to experiment and learn from. This is actually more effective in the helping the learning curve.
- Deployment on other machines is not quite addressed clearly.
- Pricing is very good for an engine of this quality. |
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| Very good |
This is a well written 'easy to use' engine.
There is unfortunately a tremendous lack of documentation - even for a seasoned developer. And there is next to none available for the 3d graphics newbie. The engine itself though is very well organised and it is not too hard (with the forums and other user provided documentation) for an experienced programmer to work out what can and can't be done and how to do it.
Indeed I have just successfully run a project with an intern who had _no_ previous 3d graphics experience but a little programming (c++) experience. In 14 weeks he put together a great prototype using this engine. Dynamically loaded terrain and objects, shadows, multiple light sources, textures, bumpmapping. All in c# and even unoptimised by another coder he is getting 80FPS at 1024x768 with what amounts to several million triangles in the scene.
I have seen an dabbled with the 6.5 beta and it looks very promising, lots of interesting stuff there. As someone else has mentioned - you can always fall back to directX if you want to do something that the engine does not support.
Features: Has just about everything we wanted from an engine. New shading method, physics and other new features coming in 6.5 will probably make this a 5.
Ease of use: -1 for bad documentation otherwise 5plus.
Stab & Perf: I was surprised by the performance. Stability is (so far for us) unquestioned.
Support: makes up for a lack of docs. Company seems very willing to support a community based support effort. |
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| Excellent engine !! |
Programming a 3D game is very simple and fast,it's the best engine i have used at this time.
==Features==
Shaders support,texture splatting for really good terrain and many other functions...
==Ease of use==
Very simple and support of the managed code C#,VB.Net.
==Stability==
I currently have a project of more than 4000 lines of code and that functions perfectly.
==Support==
The support is really fast, because there is the possibility of connecting to a chatroom with several users of tv3d. |
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| Mazter Duh Rayon |
Big summary isn't required. Basic programming skills are all that are needed to use this engine. And basic skills in what language? you choose, it supports all the most used languages (including .net's).
If there is an engine out there that has more features, more 'ease of use', 'stability' and 'support', then by all means share it so i can give this engine a thumb down :-D
There should also be a rating for price, ...as its FREE and allows you to use it for personal use until you decide to go commercial.
last of all, these are comments coming from a 6.2 user, let alone the 6.5 version is supposed to drop your jaw to China (if you live in north america). |
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| very easy AND fast O_O |
well, i came to TV3D with just some beginning vb .net under my belt. i learned the whole 3d thing with tv3d, just by looking at the docs.
after i had some 3d experience, i started trying out other engines, but i haven't come across any engine that's this easy to use, supports .NET AND is this fast
i don't have a license, so i use the (some say it's slow 0_0) free 6.2 SDK, wich is fast already.
the 6.5 will simply 0wn every low-cost 3d engine i know
also i like it that i can choose whatever language i like (wich would be vb .net)
summary:
very easy and fast |
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| Excellent |
Quite simply, this is a powerful, fast, and easy to use engine. Whether you're a hobbyist or a professional, this is THE engine.
Features - Just you wait until 6.5 is publicly released with awesome features like pixel shaders, Newton physics, landscape multitexturing...
Ease of Use - Very easy to use with your choice of language (c++, c#, delphi, VB6, VB.net). Engine use is very straightforward and intuitive.
Stability & Performance - Extremely stable AND fast.
Support - The community absolutely HAS to be the most supportive one out there. Tutorials and Samples also come for all supported languages and are quite thorough. However I give TV3D -1 on support because of the lacking documentation. |
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| The best out there |
I was a newbie when it came to 3d programming. I didn't have a clue even what a mesh was. The Truevision3D engine not only speeds up development time but it helps you learn what you are doing. The tutorials walk you through the basics and help you get started on your way to learning how to become a 3d programmer. This engine is not a game engine. This engine is a 3d engine, you need to do the game programming yourself. In my case that is a good thing because I am working on a 3d molecular modeling program and a 3d game. This engine lets me do both.
The communtiy is amazing and answer all of my dumb questions. You can get help on both the forums and in IRC chat. In both places people are friendly and helpful. I have many times chatted with the developers in getting help with a problem. Where else can you chat dirrectly with the development team.
I would suggest this engine to anyone that really wants to make progress on thier project. |
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| simply amazing. |
Having used this engine for a number of years now, TV3D has only gotten better and better. With 6.5 soon to go open beta, the functionality that is given to you is bar none the best I have seen in awhile.
The community is absolutely great, not only are they very helpful when it comes to questions, but they provide lot's insight through the WIKI.
One of the other things I love most about this product is that the dev team actually get involved with the community, I personally talk to the dev's nearly every day. and we bounce back ideas, and they even add in features that you think will be useful for others. Now I don't know of many other products that offer that kind of service!
And the best thing it has to offer is the support for multiple languages. Be it VB,VB.NET, C#, C++, Delphi, Java. All with the same functions so you can port code over from one to the other with little to no hassle.
Overall I have to easily give it 5/5. |
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Not sure why all the rave reviewsPosted by:
Ciperl
at May 23, 2005 |
Testing out this engine got me wondering how in the world this engine got such rave reviews. And today I just found out that currently there is no networking in the engine, that it is in a closed alpha test right now. For someone looking to make a game that would have a bit of multiplayer, TV3D is not going to cut it. I have begun to wonder if people reviewing this engine on this site are beta testers and are actually reviewing unreleased versions of this engine. Because what I downloaded is nothing like what people are describing in the glowing reviews. Plus, I tried looking around for any finished and shipped games with this engine and could not find any, yet still it receives glowing reviews... I'm confused.
In today's day and age when multiplayer is almost a must-have for any game, I will have to wait until TV3D actually has a solid networking aspect to their engine, because currently this is an incomplete package. Currently the documentation really sucks, though I'm told that this will be fixed with a future version. Plus, I find it funny that one of the developers tossed off the fact that TV3D renders slowly and has no networking and simply gave his engine 5 stars across the board.
And my final gripe is that it only supports Windows. As an independent developer, cross platform support is vital for me to reach the widest audience possible.
Ahh well, I guess I'll wait till 6.5 is released. I just wished many more of these "glowing" reviews would actually talk about the current version and not a future version that is not released. This current version is lacking but I know that the developers will fix things over time, but right now, the engine is not ready. |
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| Great! |
| This is a good engine for hobbyists, like me, if you want to get your " feet wet" with coding.The features are good, it comes with loads of documentation, including at least 2 different sites with information for users,and, my own little test for each engine, trying to open it with dev-c++, not many non-ansi coding probs.....support is good as well..... |
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| Good SDK |
Hello,
First of all let me say that i don't have a license for this sdk. I've tried the 6.2 edition.
This SDK is very stable and feature rich. Ok, it's not a game engine.. but the rendering it produces is good.
It's very well documented, and the community is great.
If you ask (non newbie) stupid questions or act as an lazy lamer.. you will be flamed on. That's fair i think. However one thing that i don't like is the WINDOWS ONLY part. It uses DirectX as it's foundation. Wich is BAD BAD BAD... with more and more Linux and Mac users just around the corner...
I've noticed that more and more of the newest games are also aviable for linux and Mac platforms, so this should be the next step in gaming.. multiplatform support. You simply can't deny this movement anymore.
Truevision3D should be pointing in the future instead of only using one platform.
As long as this won't happen.. i wont use it commercially. |
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| Five Stars Across the Board! |
Hello Devmaster.net,
I am the Business Director of Nemesis Studios Entertainment and we have been utilizing the TrueVision 6.5 SDK beta for many moons now and it has been an incredible journey thus far.
This is the closest engine in the middleware catagory you will see in comparison to professional six digit figure licenses such as Unreal 3.
The TrueVision staff has been amazingly supportive and has worked hand in hand with us to progress on our prototype for our upcoming MMOG that we will be releasing at E3 either this year or the following.
This engine is perfect for any game design as long as the developers have an extensive knowledge of game design itself. It's also nice for potential developers to learn with and has a very easy to use interface.
A good friend of mine by the name of David Allen chose to use this engine a few years back to create his prototype for his MMOG called Dominion. David is also the original creator of Horizons and Artifact Entertainment, but some legal issues broke out and he left the company to create Dominion. Dominion has however ceased in development, but not because of the engine, but other personal reasons.
The TV3D staff earn 5 stars across the boards coming from the developers of Nemesis Studios Entertainment for Features, Ease of Use, Stability and Performance and Support! |
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| Awesome 3D Engine |
This engine is truly top notch. With 6.5 you can get all of the graphical quality that today's latest games have at a very affordably price (free or $150 to sell a product). This engine includes over 200 internal shaders that include bumpmapping, per-pixel lighting, and many more. Also, it is very easy to incorporate your own shaders into a scene.
Also, TrueVision3D is one of the first engines I have ever seen that has true multilanguage support, including such exotic languages as APL.
The samples and docs with 6.2 were decent enough to get me started, and great forum and chatroom helped even more. With what other engines can you hop on IRC and talk to the devs? Also, the 6.5 docs, when completed, will be really good.
There are several programs that come with 6.5, including ModelView, where you can apply effects and textures to models, convert an X model to a TVM / TVA model, and scale your model. There is also ParticleEditor, where you can create awesome effects in no time. There will also be a shader editor included, and there are currently export plugins for most major modeling packages including Maya and Max, making the art pipeline great.
To top it off, the engine is very stable and the engine (6.5) is written entirely in C++. It is extremely fast as well.
Note to all new users: You NEED programming experience to use this engine. It is easy to use as long as you do have programming experience.
Also, just an FYI, 6.5 HAS BEEN RELEASED to customers, there just is no free version yet. |
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| Damn near perfect but as per usual it falls flat in the delivery. |
I have been a Truevision follower for a number of years, and have always had great expectations of this product. The TV3D team has developed a fantastic engine that can be used in almost any language that is fairly straight forward to use and has an active development team that actually helps there users via the forums or the IRC channel.
That being said I have time and time again harped on the fact of there incomplete documentation and there lack of premium support. The Truevision engine has many features that are obtuse at best, and having gone through the process of the upgrade the completed 6.2 to the 6.5 beta, we have chosen at my company not to use Truevision for a commercial product, not because it is a bad product but because it lacks that the largest part that make a product great.
Some of the things I like about the engine are;
- Huge feature set, it is of the smaller engine companies one of the most capable
- It wraps complex ideas into simple functions. For example creating a landscape can be accomplished in <100 lines of code.
- The engine is all inclusive; it supports all of your needs for a project. It has a sound engine, video engine, networking engine and a physics engine all wrapped into the API.
- The 2 main developers are responsive to community questions.
- Ideal cost for home brew developers
- A warm community (just dont say bad things about the engine they are territorial)
Some of the things I dont like;
- It is always in Beta. The 6.5 version has been in the works now for well over a year, and as far as I can tell it will be for quite some time to come.
- There seems to be no inclusion of the community into how long the process is going to take for completion, no timelines have been given, and no release dates.
- The API changes a lot. (This is getting better as 6.5 gets more mature) Time and time again I have developed a chunk of code that needs to change because they have changed the API. Granted I am working with the 6.5 beta but to be blunt the API call list should have been structured before the rewrite, not during. They should also have taken a page from Microsofts book and left old functions in and remapped to new function calls instead of removing them, thus not breaking code customers have written.
- They have abandoned there 6.2 version of the engine because the 6.5 version will do more. I get this its always more fun to work on the newer version, but in business you dont let a 6.2 version of the engine stagnate because the new version is coming.
- The manual is not existent, and the tutorials while being well documented are not enough to cover the process. The expectation is that you will learn from a chunk of code
- The feature set jump from 6.2 to 6.5 was huge thus making it impossible to deliver updates quickly or efficiently. They should have made smaller changes, and done more frequent release cycles, instead of trying to do all of them in one go.
- No Premium support. If I am going to develop a 6.6 Million dollar project I want to know that I can get a hold of a developer of the engine to make sure that a problem we are running into is solved.
Over all I like the Truevision engine, and I support its people and the community and my hopes are that they will be able to get to a point where the API is finished and there will be a book written for the lower end people who can/wont learn from code.
If you are a hobbyist who wants to learn about 3D programming, or a small developer looking for an engine for a project the Truevision engine will fit the bill. If you are looking for a robust finished engine that has regular releases, premium support and strong documentation you will need to look elsewhere. |
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| Best Indy 3D development tool out there |
I had played around with the earlier versions and was impressed but ended up going the torque route and bought the whole set of tools and developed a few basic test games.
I have turned my hand at modding a number of games (like all of us)
But after paying for a license of TV3D and playing about with Beta 6.5 I was hooked.
I have leant so much about games development while building some basic test games with TV3D. It is not a games engine though; you have to develop your own tools pipeline e.g. developing your own tools (editors) to allow you to build a fully texture splattered paged landscape with cool water and positions of objects.
If you are willing to learn then this is an excellent tool with all the cool features of MUCH more expensive options.
And for $150 a license its a steal. I am only a hobbyist games dev and I would have paid $500 or more for a single license now I have seen what it is and know what it can do. |
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| Very Good!!! |
I think the best game engine in the world.Very ease of use.Very good performance.
And Version 6.5 coming few days later.
Version 6.5 includes:
Newton physic engine,
new shader engine...
If you want make a 3D game ; the best Truevision3D. |
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| Can anyone tell me... |
...why TV3D is that high in this ranking? Sure, the rendering features are quite nice. Not really cutting edge but still good. However: where are the network features? Where is the scripting? And where the f**k is the level/world/map editor? TV3D is not really an engine, it's more a engine SDK. It will help you building your own engine around it. Is that what you want? I don't think so! You've come here to search for an game engine! TV3D is not an game engine!
By the way: It lacks multiplattform support. Sure, main plattform for games on home computers is Windows, but if you're an indie, then multiplattform is a must! Performance is good, stability and support, too. But TV3D is not good enough for 2nd place. |
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TV3D: A Very Good Engine, But...Posted by:
at Nov 1, 2006 |
TrueVision 3D 6.0x is a very good engine. However, like some other reviewers, I'm getting rather impatient waiting for TV3D 6.5 to be released. It's been almost 2 years and 6.5 is still in beta! I have made tremendous progress with my game and TV3D has much to do with that. But now that Microsoft is strongly pushing XNA, and the XNA beta has already been released, I'm seriously considering rewriting my entire game in XNA. This is mostly due to the fact that I can produce an XBox 360 version of my game side-by-side with the PC version. And, since XNA is a Microsoft product, there will be tremendous commercial and technical support behind it. Say what you want about Microsoft but I have to be realistic about the future of my current game, as well as games to come. Microsoft is currently scheduling XNA Pro (or whatever it will be called) for Spring 2007, which will probably be before TV3D 6.5 goes gold.
TV3D has great support. You can almost always get a quick response to your technical questions and there are lots of indie developers willing to help newbies. Some of TV3D's features are difficult for beginners to use and understand, but that's true for almost any game engine.
I agree that the TV3D team should focus its efforts on finishing 6.5 before worrying about making it easy to use with all languages. No serious game developer or team is going to use Visual Basic or Delphi to produce a commercial-quality game. I'm sorry if that offends anyone but I honestly believe that is the true state of the matter. There may be many indie developers using these or other languages for game creation but they are hobbyists. If the TrueVision team wants TV3D to be taken seriously as a commercial-quality engine, they have to be willing to ask some hard questions which may force them to abandon they hobby community.
I have great respect for the TrueVision team. They have created a great product and made it available for a very fair price. I just hope they can shift into high gear to make TrueVision 6.5 (and future versions) a serious contender for creating 3D games. |
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| Vapor-ware, stay away |
I have purchased this engine in Spring of 2005. I was told then that version 6.5 was in closed beta and would be public beta around end of summer of 2005. Well, that came and went, and so did winter and spring of 2006. It is now Fall 2006 and no sign of public beta AND they took out features from 6.5 in order to "speed up" the PUBLIC BETA. No one is even talking about a release.
If you mention anything about it, it starts a flame war from either camp. Developers answer "it will be released once we are confident, please be patient". That has been the response for far too long. DX9 is being replaced soon anyways, and DX10 features are not even spoken about.
If you are serious about development and need a working engine, this is not for you unless you are fine with v6.1 and DX8.1. 6.5 seems like it will never release and has been reduced in functionality. 1 1/2 years, and counting, is a long time to wait in software industry. It has been a waste of my money.
BTW. Since purchasing TV3D, I have released two casual games - one done in BlitzMax and the other in GameMaker. Initially they were to be done in 3D in TV3D. :(.
Bad support is in reference to their support of the code. Features is in reference to their lack of 6.5 features to compelete the product. |
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| TV3D: A Very Good Engine, But... |
TrueVision 3D 6.0x is a very good engine. However, like some other reviewers, I'm getting rather impatient waiting for TV3D 6.5 to be released. It's been almost 2 years and 6.5 is still in beta! I have made tremendous progress with my game and TV3D has much to do with that. But now that Microsoft is strongly pushing XNA, and the XNA beta has already been released, I'm seriously considering rewriting my entire game in XNA. This is mostly due to the fact that I can produce an XBox 360 version of my game side-by-side with the PC version. And, since XNA is a Microsoft product, there will be tremendous commercial and technical support behind it. Say what you want about Microsoft but I have to be realistic about the future of my current game, as well as games to come. Microsoft is currently scheduling XNA Pro (or whatever it will be called) for Spring 2007, which will probably be before TV3D 6.5 goes gold.
TV3D has great support. You can almost always get a quick response to your technical questions and there are lots of indie developers willing to help newbies. Some of TV3D's features are difficult for beginners to use and understand, but that's true for almost any game engine.
I agree that the TV3D team should focus its efforts on finishing 6.5 before worrying about making it easy to use with all languages. No serious game developer or team is going to use Visual Basic or Delphi to produce a commercial-quality game. I'm sorry if that offends anyone but I honestly believe that is the true state of the matter. There may be many indie developers using these or other languages for game creation but they are hobbyists. If the TrueVision team wants TV3D to be taken seriously as a commercial-quality engine, they have to be willing to ask some hard questions which may force them to abandon the hobby community.
I have great respect for the TrueVision team. They have created a great product and made it available for a very fair price. I just hope they can shift into high gear to make TrueVision 6.5 (and future versions) a serious contender for creating 3D games. |
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| I've seen it all, but I eventually came back to TrueVision3D. |
A couple years ago I spent a fair amount of time with this engine, and enjoyed creating a few prototype applications. It worked well and was one of the few engines that allowed me to create a fast, fully featured game using C#.
However, the 6.2 version was lacking slightly, especially in the area of physics and it didn't seem 6.5 was anywhere on the horizon (and I was right about that). So I went digging and spent nearly a year experimenting with various engines, such as Torque, 3D Game Studio, The Reality Engine, OGRE, Axiom, Panda3D, and basically anything that seemed potential. Many of these engines have a better feature set than the current 6.2 version of TrueVision, and some have excellent GUI tools TV lacks.
However, in the end I'm right back to 6.2 and have had a great deal of fun and success developing a fairly complex space RPG/trading/combat educational game. I'm not really worried about the lack of features because the upcoming 6.5 version will literally contain everything I need and it should be easy enough to upgrade my project. TV just has a certain charm about it. From a programmer's perspective it's crystal clear, extremely easy to use and amazingly stable.
It's important to realize that TV3D is made for programmers. It is a the true definition of a graphic engine, in my opinion. It's not a RAD game tool 3D Game Studio, nor is it a moddable game engine like Unreal. For example, there is no "level editor" because the concept of levels does not exist. You create the concept yourself by using landscapes, 3D geometry, or even just open space.
This is not good news for a hobbyist looking for software that will allow them to quickly slap together a game via a GUI interface or by modding an engine that's already almost a complete game. This engine is for serious developers, or even an up and coming serious developers or hobbyist who want to get a good grasp on game programming without having to spend all their time learning complex DirectX programming .
TV3D is essentially a (very complete and well implemented) wrapper for DirectX, and while XNA is definitely a competitor, TV3D is still superior and easier to program. (Note: I believe it will also integrate with XNA somehow, but that's a rumor, so don't quote me on it.)
I'm very, very happy with TrueVision, warts and all. The community is vibrant, thriving and helpful and the engine gives me the flexibility to do basically anything I can dream of without having to resort to programming DirectX directly. If you're a programmer -- especially a C#, VB.NET, VB6 or Delphi programmer, then TrueVision 3D is the best choice by far. |
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| TV3d, The community from hell. |
TV3d is neat and clean, offering some of the best project control (organization) of any similar engines. It's not nearly as easy to use as Beyond Virtual or 3d Game Studio, but it's quite a bit more powerful.
One of the primary downsides to consider BEFORE purchasing this engine is the user community. I have, in the past 25 days, demo-ed 23 game creation suites, and the user community from TV3D is, by far, the most inconsiderate, cold, and unwilling to help community in the game development industry. And people dare complain about Torque's community, granted they suck too, but TV3D will easily out-flame any noob twice as fast as Torque.
But the engine is very pretty, and integrates well with any .NET. VB6 support will likely get dropped in the near future, if they ever release another update that is... anyway, this engine's power and ease of development lies directly between Torque (Power) and Beyond Virtual (Ease). TV3D is slightly easier to use then Torque, but it's nowhere near the ease of a "game maker" like BV or 3DGS. |
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| Don't listen to the naysayers, they're noobs. |
First of all, my own experience with other engines, and development in general:
I have worked with RealmForge, Ogre3D, and was a tester and documentation writer for OgreDotNet. I jumped ship on OgreDotNet when I found out about TrueVision3D! Native VB.NET support is AMAZING to find in any engine these days. Look at the other options you have on Devmaster here... for VB.NET, the options are VERY slim.
I am a 10 year veteran IT professional, with about 5 years of development experience in C++, VB, VB.NET, PHP, SQL, etc...
So, what do I think of this engine? Quite honestly, it saved my game project from absolute failure. OgreDotNet was floundering, with a lack of community support (one of the bad things about open source... too much reliance on the charity work of others is a bad thing). Ogre3D was out, because I simply can't stand C++ anymore.
TrueVision's feature set is not only "adequate", it's simply amazing. That said, let me address the naysayers who say "Where is the network engine? Where's the world editor? Where's the (whatever)?!?!?"
The answer is simple: They don't exist, and anyone that expects them to in a PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TOOL, is... well... an absolute novice idiot.
This is a 3D Rendering Engine, not a Game Building Kit. Game Building kits lock you in to the methods that the kit makers decide you should use to render your scene, create your world, etc.
Look at any professional devleopment house, and you'll see them making their OWN network engine, world editor, or whatever. Why? Because that gives them flexibility and 100% creative control!
The creators of TrueVision understand this. As a TrueVision user you are EXPECTED to create your own world development tools. Heck, TV doesn't even come with a GUI SYSTEM... but it DOES come with the functionality to draw things to the screen. In a few short months I was able to make my own GUI system, which I then released to the community.
The long and short of it is this: It's not the job of the GRAPHIC RENDERING ENGINE producers to provide you with all the other tools you need to make your game. If you want to make a game on the fast and cheap, by using tools provided to you for EVERYTHING, then don't use TrueVision... it's not for you.
Oh, and regarding the community? Yes, we're snippy sometimes; with noobs that come in expecting everything to be handed to them like we owe them something. We recognize true professionals and treat them with respect. Let this be a little warning... if you're sniped at by the TV community, 99% of the time, you're acting like a noob and deserve it. (And remember, Google is your friend, use it before you try to leech off of everyone around you).
Anyway... TrueVision is easy... stable... and the support is absolutely amazing. I have not yet (in over a year of development with it) encountered a problem I couldn't find the answer for. The "lack of documentation" is truly only a problem for novice programmers that can't understand the most basic of concepts illustrated through sample code and simple intuitiveness.
Regarding the licensing, don't let the above reviewer misrepresent it. It's a very simple process that merely involves "signing" your deployed EXE file with a license file, created by a license signing app that creates the license file. Yes, that license signing app requires an internet connection to verify your license with the central TV servers (of which there are 4 or more, located around the globe, so the chance of downtime is statistically nil.)
If you can't handle signing your EXE and sending a small (<1kb) file out with it, then I don't know what your problem is... it literally takes ZERO time to do it, as you can set up the license signing process as a command line post-build event. And if you're having to connect to the internet JUST to create that license file... well, get off dialup and get broadband, scrub! Saying you're scared of your source being stolen like HL2's was is... well... simply laughable. (*AS IF* you are that high profile you'll have people trying to steal your source code... Whatever... *rolls eyes*)
Regarding the "giving out of your key to others"... well, I'm happy to say the above reviewer is TOTALLY misinformed. There is a "developer license" that you can create and distribute out to your other developers in your project. This was done SPECIFICALLY to PROTECT your licensing information, while allowing multiple people on the same development team to develop with TV. You create the developer license file and simply give that file to your developers, and they can develop with TV without the watermark.
Calling the licensing model "too high of a requirement to use this engine" is sort of like saying "tying your shoes is too high of a requirement to go outside". It's simply as silly as that.
Enough setting the record straight... I hope you can see that the bitterness shown by the negative reviewers is born out of either being VERY stupid, or completely noobish. If you're a professional developer, and want a POWERFUL engine, come join us! Come ask us all questions in the TrueVision IRC channel (IRC server is truevision3d.com, channel #Truevision3d). We'll be glad to answer any of your questions about the engine! |
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| Make sure you understand the licensing before you buy! |
TV3D is an excellent engine. The community can be pretty harsh when they don't agree with you, but overall they are very helpfull. Saw someone post criticism of the new license system and they were all over them.
If, you are like me, and after the HL2 source scare, you don't have your dev box connected to the internet, then this will affect you.
The new license system requires a connection to the internet to remove the watermark from distributed exe. You can avoid this by running a program on your computer to create a general file that will work on your computer only. If you want, you can give out your key to other people and they can create this file too. But that means that they get your license key. Not a great idea.
So if you want to give out a non watermarked exe to testers or artists, or anyone that doesn't have your license key, you must be connected to the internet to create a .lic file that works for that version of the exe only. So you have to be connected every time you want to release a non watermarked exe.
Just thought that people should know as this does affect the way many people work.
Since there isn't really a category to review this problem. I'm using ease of use, since this feature places too high of a requirement to use the engine. |
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| great 3d engine |
TV3D 6.5 is truly an excellent 3D engine. They have a robust featureset and intuitive framework design so that it is quite easy to pick up and learn. The community is simply the best I have seen, always lots of activity and questions answered. The support is fantastic too, you can usually find developers hanging out in IRC as well as longtime users so its easy to get realtime help/support.
The terrain engine is extremely fast and supports cool things like splatting and LoD. Meshes have many features and the built in physics engine makes your scenes come alive.
Overall I rate this engine as superb and the fact that you can try it for free indefinitely until you are ready to buy makes it a no brainer to at least check out. |
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| Very Good Game Engine Waiting 7.0 Version and Waiting XboX360 Support |
Very Good Engine
Windowed or fullscreen support, with the ability to switch between modes during rendering
32bits standard rendering pipeline for main buffer rendering
64bits and 128bits floating point rendering pipeline available
Multiple viewport mode available in windowed mode
Multiple adapter support, with full enumeration of devices and supported rendering modes
Antialiasing and Anisotropic filtering up to 16x supported
Switch between point, line, and solid rendering modes |
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| Read EagleEye's Review! |
He's an excellent example of what stinks about the Truevision community in general.
The engine itself is quite nice and pretty easy to use. God help you if you have a question though, the forums are your only means of support since the documentation is abysmal and the samples are mostly outdated and poorly documented. Ask a question on the forums...good luck getting any help or answers to even the most simplistic questions.
While I never got any outright RUDE jerks like EagleEye responding to me I did get more then enough SILENCE...or people who simply were incapable of reading a post before dumping a knee jerk response to what they think is the question. I can't count the number of times I got people telling me to try things that I had already stated several times in the same thread that I had tried and they did not work. Yea, getting support for Truevision is NOT fun, in that regard it is a commercial product run as if it was open source. In every other regard however, Truevision is a good quality engine that will serve you well...assuming you can get support for it. |
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| As a New User. |
TV3d Is a great for new users and begginers with only a little VB experiance. There is a lot of support, but you have to be proactive in getting it. Remember that every-one on the comunity is either doing this as a hobby, or are actually working so they don't owe you anything - once you understand that i think that getting help is a lot easier.
There are samples and tutorials spread about, just find them, and muck around and experiment with the code to see what you can do.
Using tv3d (as well as the many add-on SKD's built upon it) is a matter of researching all the possible functions and what they do, so thier is a steep learning curve.
IMO, tv3d is good for the hobbist or small enterprise that has time and wants a cheap, reliable and full featured package. If you want extensive support there are more expessive options out there, if you can afford it.
For me it was a choice between this and irrlicht, and even though this has a small price, it has fewer bugs and more features.
It is free until you want to make it commercial, so feel free to have a look and write a few demo's - it costs nothing. |
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| Horrid support |
You ask a question, your pretty much ignored or some jerk comes and give you a rude answer.
The community is terribad, the pricing of the engine is Terribad, the sambles are Terribad. Sure the engine gives you nice visuals...yay.... but it means nothing if you cant get help. |
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